Silenced in China – Washington Post editorial

The publication was also unusual in that it was not registered with the Chinese government or controlled by the state, and yet it was seen to be relatively friendly to the Chinese government. The publication’s founder, British expatriate Nick Young, has indicated that he is sympathetic “to the real difficulties of governing this huge and complicated country” and has been critical of groups such as Amnesty International. None of that helped. The Beijing Statistics Bureau said it was shutting down the publication for conducting unauthorized surveys, a crime that seems to include any sort of information gathering. The government also has reportedly shut down Minjian, a Chinese-language quarterly that also focused on civil society and social issues, and reports have surfaced that eight journalists at the Chinese-language Democracy and Law legal journal were sacked mysteriously. [Full text]